A Partial Future

Here’s the thing about being involved: You never stop. There is always something more to do, more to give, more to practice, more to improve or perfect. Nothing ends.

But this summer, it will end. I will proudly bestow the reigns of two organizations onto two as-of-yet-undecided new presidents who will inherit all of my pent-up knowledge (or lack thereof), and the future of Homecoming, events, and publications will no longer rest on my shoulders. No more letters, no more emails (and trust me–I send a lot of emails). And what will I do with my proteges basking in the wisdom I have hopefully conferred upon them?

I have no idea. At least, I didn’t, but now my future is partially planned out. I now know I will be attending Emerson College in Boston, MA (yes, Boston. I love my B-towns). My summer, however, is currently still undecided. Will I find a job in Bemidji? The Cities? My hometown of Eyota, in southern Minnesota? (If anyone knows of jobs–I’m very willing to do something below my degree level.)

As of two weeks ago, I didn’t even have Emerson planned out, so I figure I’ve made leaps and bounds recently. I hadn’t been confident in confirming so quickly my attendance at a school I’d never seen in a city I’d never been to, so I decided to forego my responsibilities for a few days to hop on a plane to Boston. Discussing planes a few days before leaving, my friend Martha told me about a plane that had landed in an Iowa cornfield. Apparently, it had just stopped working after takeoff–first the lights, then the air, then…and down they went. I felt better after hearing that the pilot was able to land them in the field and I calmly reassured myself that I could trust the mechanics and physics of planes to help me return to ground safely; then Martha added, “And one wing tipped and hit the ground so the plane spun over and blew up.”

Equipped with this knowledge, I departed northern Minnesota on a brisk spring afternoon and, after a brief hiatus in the cities, flew to Boston for the Emerson College Graduate Open House, where they considered a windy 45-degree-Fahrenheit day to be cold enough to warrant an explanation of “This is spring” and a few hoots of laughter at their wit (after which I returned to a snow advisory and the current 20-inch addition of snow with power outages that astonishingly didn’t warrant a cancellation of classes). Now, after a whirlwind tour of the area and its foreign-friendly visitor areas, I feel much more comfortable and am happy to say that I am pleased with my choice. Boston has a rich history and active arts area, so if nothing else, it will be an interesting two and a half years.